


Artefactual

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Post-Winter Soldier, brothers in every way that counts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-23
Updated: 2014-01-23
Packaged: 2018-01-09 18:37:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1149433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve was more than happy to look through the notebooks with him because if Bucky was going to trust Steve's narrative of his history over his own, well, Steve had always thought the world of James Buchanan Barnes and it was going to show.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Artefactual

Steve's first doodle pad was a gift from Sister Mary Francis, who'd noticed his scribbles on the backs of scrap papers that he'd scrounged from around the orphanage; it was something to keep him occupied while he sat inside during recess after yet another cold that had pushed to the edge of pneumonia before pulling back. It had been the first of many such gifts, something the other boys might have gotten jealous of if it hadn't been deemed of so little value and if Bucky hadn't started beating up the ones who'd tried to make an issue out of it or who'd tried to steal them. Bucky was less inclined to interfere in the fights that started because Steve was drawing unflattering caricatures, however, although that didn't always stop Steve from ignoring his better angels and continuing the practice. He got his licks in his own way. 

The box of notebooks moved with them when they aged out of the orphanage, which hadn't been Steve's intent. But Father Bertram had wrapped them up neatly and told him that these were the souvenirs of his childhood and he should hold on to them as keepsakes, to be taken out every once in a while as the years passed so that he and Bucky -- Father B was quite sure that they would always be a part of each other's life -- could laugh and show their children and think fondly of those they'd once known. It was a nice thing to say, Steve had thought at the time, if a little optimistic because Steve had thus far had no luck getting a girl to walk home from school with him, let alone do anything that might lead to a future with children. 

Father Bertram's vision of his and Bucky's futures turned out not to be, although, to be fair, not because they'd been two sixteen-year-olds on their own for the first time and the odds had been against them from the start. The box of notebooks moved from Brooklyn to Manhattan, Steve's last county of residency before Project Rebirth, then to a storage facility along with the rest of Steve's and Bucky's belongings to await their return to civilian life after the war, and then to the Smithsonian once the war did end and neither Steve nor Bucky were around to see it. The museum curators took the notebooks, having already been gifted with most of the ones the SSR had deemed harmless, plus Bucky's letters to Steve from the North African front, and a few other artifacts that supported the narrative of Captain America and Sergeant Barnes and less Steve-and-Bucky. Which was why, when Steve woke up seventy years later, he asked for none of it back save for copies of the photos. 

When they got Bucky back, Steve took him to the Smithsonian after hours, just the two of them. It hadn't been to remind Bucky of who he was, which was what Bucky had accused him of doing. The display had nothing to do with who either of them were, Steve replied. It was who the guys on the newsreels were, the movie stars, and they hadn't been those people then and certainly weren't those people now. You're not the only one who has changed, Steve didn't say, even if there was a difference of degree. Nobody else will appreciate the absurdity was what he did say. The exhibit was as ridiculous as promised, too pristine to be any true testament of war, and they went through it with jaded eyes.

In the back rooms, however, in temperature- and humidity-controlled storage, were the letters and Steve's notebooks that hadn't fit the semi-hagiography of Captain America and the Howling Commandos. Bucky didn't want to look at the letters -- I don't wanna be reminded of what kind of innocent I was, he said. But he did want to look at Steve's notebooks, even the earliest ones from the orphanage with the caricatures of Toby Schenker (with drops of Steve's blood on the page, courtesy of a punch to the nose from Toby, who hadn't liked the depiction) and the sketches of Bucky still filling out from boy to man. Steve was more than happy to look through them with him because if Bucky was going to trust Steve's narrative of his history over his own, well, Steve had always thought the world of James Buchanan Barnes and it was going to show.

Bucky laughed as he held up a page with a cartoon of Sister Hortense with a ruler in one hand and Matty O'Donnell's ear in the other (Matty should have had cauliflower ears from all the times he got caught misbehaving; he survived the war to become a cop, of all things). As he smiled, Steve thought about Father Bertram, whose funeral masses for Steve and Bucky hadn't been the ones he'd performed for boys he'd helped raise. Father B might have guessed the details wrong, but he'd gotten the important things right and Steve had never been more grateful for that neatly wrapped package than he was right now.


End file.
